“In my lifetime, I have seen two elections where the winner of the general election did not win the popular vote,” said Senator Boxer. “When all the ballots are counted, Hillary Clinton will have won the popular vote by a margin that could exceed two million votes, and she is on track to have received more votes than any other presidential candidate in history except Barack Obama. This is the only office in the land where you can get more votes and still lose the presidency. The Electoral College is an outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society, and it needs to change immediately. Every American should be guaranteed that their vote counts.”

The least populous states will become electoral non-entities. At least in the presidential elections. Goodbye Wyoming, Vermont, D.C., North & South Dakota, Alaska, Delaware.

Maxx44

Such a ridiculous argument. States should not elect presidents, people should. I live in Georgia where my blue vote is meaningless. One man, one vote (that actually counts.)

StoneyCurtisll

I feel the same way here in Missouri, 114 counties and only four of them, in the major population areas, KCMO/STL voted blue this election..

Jack E Raynbeau

Been voting in Utah since 1976. My vote has not counted in that entire time.

Lyndia

Common sense, one man, one vote, winner takes all.

Larry Schmitt

On the other hand, each person in Wyoming will have the same impact as Bill Gates. Or Donald trump, for that matter.

Larry Schmitt

That’s assuming trump can figure out where he’s supposed to vote. A couple of elections ago, he couldn’t.

StoneyCurtisll

Took him three times to find the right place~!

Larry Schmitt

And it turned out he wasn’t registered. They let him use a provisional ballot, and he thought he had voted. He proved, on camera, how ignorant of the process he is. He also proved that money don’t make ya smart.

StoneyCurtisll

Indeed..

StoneyCurtisll

Oh come on Larry…
You know Trump usually have people that do this sort of thing for him….(vote)..;)

Larry Schmitt

It was obvious from his lack of familiarity with the system that he hadn’t voted recently.

StoneyCurtisll

Of course…

Jack E Raynbeau

They will still be fully represented by congress. Their individual vote shouldn’t have more clout.

Glen

That would be true, if the larger states all voted uniformly.

They don’t.

What’s more, all of the ones you listed were pretty much ignored, anyway, because under the current system, with those states (and DC) being incredibly one-sided in their make-up (Wyoming, Dakotas, and Alaska being very Republican, Vermont, DC and Delaware being very Democrat), anyone who votes the other way in those states don’t really matter – as such, candidates spend little time in those areas.

The current system encourages all of the time being spent in “swing states”, and the result is that only a handful of states seriously decide the presidency.

If it went to a popular vote, then a Democrat getting another 10,000 votes in Wyoming, or a Republican getting another 10,000 votes in DC (doubling their number from this election), gets just as much benefit as if they get the 10,000 votes in Pennsylvania.

Your first instinct is to go “but those small states have too small a population to justify time for a popular vote”… but what you don’t realise is, those states have been ignored for a long time, and as such, if getting a modest increase in the vote from those states actually benefited your total, actually campaigning there could have a big impact on your result – if Clinton could get, say, another 50,000 votes from Wyoming, that would be worth a trip there, even though it wouldn’t be enough to “win” Wyoming.

In short, switching to the popular vote would actually advantage those states.

But even if that weren’t true, a solution would be to have a “scaled-popular” vote, where the value of a vote in the small-population states would be higher than in the large-population states. Suddenly, getting another 50,000 votes from Wyoming could be comparable to getting about 120,000 from Pennsylvania.

crc3

Does anyone here actually believe the Electoral College will be eliminated (abolished)? I don’t…

Larry Schmitt

Wouldn’t it require a constitutional amendment?

arc99

Strictly speaking yes you are correct.

However there is a workaround called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The Constitution does not dictate how electors are chosen or to what extent their votes are controlled. It is up to the states.

With enough states passing legislation to buy into this plan, the EC could be required to follow the popular vote. The caveat would be that since it is legislation and not a Constitutional mandate, it can be reversed or repealed when new leadership is elected at the state level

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their respective electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who wins the most popular votes is elected president, and it will come into effect only when it will guarantee that outcome.[2][3]
As of 2016, it has been adopted by ten states and the District of Columbia, whose 165 combined electoral votes represent 30.7% of the total Electoral College vote, and 61.1% of the 270 votes needed for it to have legal force. All of them have been Democratic states, although the Compact passed in 2016 in Republican-controlled chambers in Arizona and New York. Swing states have shown less willingness to join the Compact, although it has passed chambers in states such as Colorado, Maine, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico.

Larry Schmitt

Ya know, this whole thing wouldn’t matter if Americans would get off their lazy asses and just vote. It all boils down to that.

Jack E Raynbeau

Hillary voters were lulled to sleep by the polls.

Jack E Raynbeau

That’s going to be the easiest way to do it. Even Utah is onboard.

Glen

They need to push to get the very-Republican states on board – since 1980, the following states have been solidly Republican: Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.

Leaving out Texas, as it’s such a big state in terms of EC votes that it still gets attention (same way California and New York do), you’re looking at 64 more EC votes. That gets the combined total to 229, leaving just 51 still needed.

Michigan, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and New Mexico would get you to 50 (and thus 269), and it shouldn’t be hard to get Delaware on board from that point – in fact, I’d imagine that the rest of the states would just go ahead and do it, if you got to 269.